by -Julia James
It would be another hot day.
She smiled to herself. Every day was hot. Every day sunny, cloudless. Every day a day in paradise. Like glowing pearls she gathered them on her rope of memory.
They would not last for ever, she knew that, but while they lasted she would distil every last ounce of happiness she could, full and overflowing.
She sipped her orange juice, bringing her gaze back from the breathtaking vista all around, of sea and sky and dazzling white cliffs, of splashing green vegetation, the brilliant azure of the pool almost at her feet.
All my life, she thought. All my life I'll remember this-. Sitting here like this, in the morning heat, with Nikos beside me.
Her eyes swept back to the paper Nikos was reading. In Greek, it was indecipherable. She gazed at the picture of the politician on the front cover as Nikos perused the report of some football match on the back page. She could read nothing—nothing except the date, written in numerals.
As the numbers swam in front of her eyes and resolved themselves she felt her heart plummet. How could it be that date already? How could the days have passed so quickly?
Foolish question! Time had seemed to stop here, in this beautiful, magical place, but in the rest of the world the clocks had kept on ticking.
Remorselessly.
She bit her lip. She might have wanted time to stop, but it hadn't. She might have wanted the outside world to disappear, but it hadn't.
And now it had returned. Stephanos had been due back yesterday.
She felt her heart contract. With Nikos she forgot everything but him! Everything—even Stephanos.
But Stephanos was her priority—he had to be. He could spend so little time with her, and she had to place him first. However magical this time with Nikos had been, she owed it to Stephanos to be there for him when he returned.
As for herself and Nikos?
Well, she'd answered that question already, down on the beach.
Resignation filled her. There could be no future for them. Nikos would move on to another woman, and she... Well, she would be left with bittersweet memories. And an emotion she would not name, which would surely, if it were left unfed, wither and die all on its own?
It would have to. Her time with Nikos was over. Suddenly, without her realising it, the hourglass had run its course and the sand was all gone. Her time with him was all gone.
All gone.
A sense of loss flooded through her.
Would she ever see Nikos again? He knew about her and Stephanos, so perhaps there might be a chance of encountering him again....
Yes, with his next woman on his arm.
She pressed her lips together, accepting that reality. She had had her time with Nikos. Now it was over.
And it was time to go back to Stephanos and be grateful, oh, so grateful, that she had him in her life now!
Nikos was folding the paper away, paying her some attention again. As his eyes lit on her he paused, seeing the strained expression on her face.
He frowned, concerned.
"What is it?'
She reached automatically for the coffeepot, jerkily.
'I've just seen the date.' She lifted her eyes to Nikos. She swallowed. 'Stephanos was due back yesterday.'
She poured out her coffee. Reality was crashing back. 'I've got to go back to the hotel. To be there for him. He can spend so little time with me—'
She looked at him, her expression troubled, then the words burst from her.
'I know I shouldn't have had this affair with you, Nikos. But you made it impossible for me to resist! I took one look at you and everything else just went out the window.' She gave a faint, rueful smile, trying so hard to be brave, though she felt like howling, weeping, crying, keening.
'This...this time with you has been magical, Nikos— truly magical! I'll never forget it—and I'll never regret it!'
He was looking at her. His expression was closed. She could not read it.
'But clearly,' he said, 'it meant very little to you.'
She stared. 'How can you think that? How can you?'
'What else am I to think?'
His voice was cold. A chill went through her. What was happening?
'What else am I to think?' he demanded again. 'You sit there and calmly tell me you are returning to the hotel to wait for Stephanos.'
She was bewildered, dismayed. 'But...but of course I must. You must know how much he means to me!'
His eyes were like gold chips. Hard. Anger was lashing through him. It had come out of nowhere, like a summer storm at sea, brought on by her words. Her serenely uttered words that told him, oh, so calmly, that she was returning to her protector.
'I had thought that you must know how much you mean to me!' His voice mocked her intonation.
She stilled. 'Do I? Do I, Nikos? Do I know what I mean to you? We've spent this time here—and it's been magical for me—magical!—like nothing else in my life! But what was it for you?'
Her eyes were wide, pained. And suddenly Nikos understood. She had no idea what he intended for her. The storm vanished from his eyes.
He got to his feet and came round to her. He drew her . up, taking her hands in his. He looked down into her face. Her beautiful, captivating face. He was quite resolved now. Her talk of returning to Stephanos had made it crystal-clear in his mind. He wanted Janine still, and he would keep her. Even had her protector been anyone else he would still have wanted her, would still have kept her. His desire for her was as overpowering now as it had been when he had first taken her.
He was going to keep her, and nothing was going to stop him. Nothing and no one.
'I don't want to part with you, Janine,' he said softly, his eyes lambent. 'I want us to be together. I want to take you back to Athens with me and make you mine. Recognised by all the world as mine.'
She gazed up at him. The breath had frozen in her throat.
Was she hearing right? Was she really, really hearing right?
Of all the words in all the world, those were the ones she had most longed to hear—the ones that she had never, never thought she would.
The emotion that she so feared to name leapt in her heart.
Her face lit like sunlight within.
'Do you really mean that?'
Her voice was a whisper. Dared she believe him. Dared she?
Her heart was full, so full...
'Do you doubt me?' he countered. 'You've swept me away, Janine. Captivated me!' He gazed down at her. Her eyes were shining again, like stars. He liked that. He liked that a lot. He liked Janine gazing up at him with stars in her eyes. He lifted her hands to his mouth and kissed each one softly, tenderly. 'I don't care who you are. It doesn't matter to me. You are mine now, and that is all that I care about. And I want you to be my—'
He paused, listening. He could hear something. A faint, distinctive thudding. It came from the land.
She drew back a little. What had made him stop—and at such a moment?
Then she heard it too.
'What is that?' She sounded alarmed.
The noise was getting louder. Closer.
Nikos glanced at her, then up to the sky. The noise was getting almost intolerable now. 'It's a helicopter,' he said. 'It's coming in to land. There's a helipad behind the villa.'
'But who on earth—?' Her words were inaudible. The racket of the rotors was deafening this close, as the machine descended.
Nikos didn't bother to answer her. He knew with every instinct just who was in that helicopter. But no purpose would be served by telling Janine. She would find out in a moment anyway.
He steeled himself. This had come too soon. He'd wanted more time. But he should have known it would happen. If it had been him coming back to find that Janine had gone from him, been taken, he, too, would have been in the first helicopter here.
The noise of the rotors increased. So did the tension stealing through him.
This was not going to be pleasant. But it had to be done
. Janine was his—his completely. There was no doubt of it in his mind. Not a shadow. Her reaction just now, to his telling her that he was taking her back to Athens with him, showed him that.
Stephanos was finished—and Nikos had his revenge and had saved his sister's marriage.
His mouth tightened in a grim line. All he had to do now was convince his sister's husband of that.
Convince him that his young mistress had taken a new lover—that he, Nikos, had taken her. And was keeping her.
His eyes glanced over Janine. She looked perfect. Just the way he wanted her to look. Ideal for his purpose. Hair tousled, wearing only a loose silk robe, skimming her beautiful body, her lips beestung from passion. No guesses as to how she had spent the night. Or—he closed his arm around her shoulders, pulling her tightly, intimately against his body—who with.
The change in the pitch of the rotors told him the helicopter had landed. The infernal racket cut out any other noise. He felt tension tighten all the way through him. He had to get through this ordeal, however ugly it proved. He had to convince Stephanos that Janine was finished with him.
'Nikos—what's happening? I don't understand?'
There was bewilderment in her voice. Did she really have no clue who was about to storm in here like a SWAT team? Well, he thought grimly, it was too late to mount a rescue for her. Much, much too late.
And the lady didn't even want rescuing! Was perfectly happy right where she was. Had chosen him, Nikos. Was his. There was no going back for her. Not now.
Footsteps pounded on the stairs leading down from the helipad past the villa. Then suddenly he was there. He was breathing heavily, Nikos could see.
His eyes fell on the pair of them immediately, and he stopped dead. At his side Nikos could feel Janine freeze totally.
'Stephanos—' he greeted the other man smoothly in his own language. I thought it might be you. You really shouldn't have left such a delectable creature on her own the way you did. You have arrived too late. Much, much too late. Janine is with me now.' He swapped to English suddenly. He wanted Janine to get this message too. 'She's staying with me, Stephanos. I'm taking her back to Athens.'
He brushed his lips across the top of Janine's hair, caressing her shoulder as he smiled at the other man. It was like sticking a knife into Stephanos's gut. His brother-in-law's face had gone completely white.
Then another face swam in his mind. Demetria—gaunt, desperate, despairing. His heart hardened. Stephanos should never have caused her so much pain and grief. His hand tightened around Janine's shoulder.
'She was very easy to seduce, Stephanos...' he taunted softly. 'And so very rewarding.'
For an endless moment the tableau held. Then, with a roar, Stephanos launched himself forward.
'You dare,' he yelled, his face contorted with rage, 'you dare to stand there and boast to me of seducing my daughter?'
CHAPTER SIX
His fist flew forward, ramming right at Nikos's face. Janine screamed. Instinctively Nikos blocked, letting go of Janine as he did so and seizing Stephanos's forearm before his fist could impact.
'Daughter?' Nikos's voice was a hiss. 'Do you take me for a fool? Do you take your wife for a fool? My sister] My poor, wretched sister! Who begged me from her hospital bed to help her. Who wept in my arms because her husband was infatuated with a twenty-five-year-old girl he'd picked up at an airport! You took one look at her and she was in your bed the same day!'
There was a low moan from beside him. He ignored it. His face was contorted, as he still exerted all his force to hold Stephanos's striking arm away from him.
Abruptly Stephanos's fist dropped. He took a step back. The expression on his face was ghastly.
'You don't understand.' His voice was a hoarse rasp. 'Janine is my daughter. The daughter I never knew I had. I saw her at Heathrow. She's...she's the image of her mother. I knew her...her mother...so many years ago. Long before I knew Demetria. When I saw Janine I thought I was seeing Louise—her mother. It was uncanny—the likeness. I had to speak to her—we got talking. And then—' His voice broke with emotion. 'I realised...the dates fit—everything fits. Nine months before Janine was born I had an affair with Louise, her mother. Louise never told me—I never knew that she was pregnant with my child. I never knew I had a daughter. Until now.'
Nikos was still. Completely still. In his cheek a muscle worked.
'Your daughter? You're telling me that Janine is your daughter?'
His voice was flat. Disbelieving.
Janine spoke in a low, faint voice. She felt sick, ill.
'You said you knew. You said you knew about Stephanos and me.'
Nikos turned his head. Janine was hanging on to the edge of the table as if it was the only thing that was keeping her upright.
'I knew you were his mistress.' H is voice still had that same flat, dead tone.
'Oh, God!' Janine choked, covering her mouth with her hand. 'How could you think such a thing?'
'Very easily,' he replied. There was a grimness now when he spoke. 'My sister told me. How should I doubt her?'
Janine lifted her eyes to him. He was still the same man she had embraced so short a time ago.
But he was a totally different man.
One she had never known.
'All along...' Her voice was a thread. 'You thought I was Stephanos's... Stephanos's...' The word choked her. 'His mistress—'
She felt the pressure building up in her, up and up, unbearably.
'Oh, God! Oh, God!' Her hand flew to her mouth again and she lurched away from the table.
With wide, distraught eyes, she stared for a moment at the hideous tableau in front of her.
'Janine! My dearest child! Pethi mou! Stephanos held out his hands to her.
She ignored them. Slowly, as if she were drowning, she shook her head from side to side. Then, with a cry of anguish, she ran indoors, to gain the blessed, solitary sanctuary of the bathroom.
* * *
The world heaved around her. Heaved, inverted, turned the wrong way up. It was like some hideous jumbled nightmare, where the floors became ceilings, the ceilings floors.
And there was no way out—none. No way to wake and find it all a horrible, terrible nightmare.
She felt sick—so nauseous that she longed for the ability to purge herself.
Purge every last day and night of this vile, hideous nightmare.
The scene on the terrace replayed itself over and over, churning through her in cold, sickening waves. She sat on the floor, on the cold marble tiles, backed into a corner as if she could bury herself in the wall. Her hands were pressed over her mouth, her knees hunched to her chest.
She was shivering—shivering with shock, and horror, and disbelief.
But believe it she must. She had no choice. Out there on the terrace two realities had crashed into each other, and she had been sucked, as if down into a vortex, into that other vile reality that Nikos Kiriakis inhabited.
She gagged in her throat.
He thought she had been Stephanos's mistress. Had thought it all along. From the moment he had laid eyes on her—from before then. And he had believed it right until the truth had been forced in front of his disbelieving eyes.
He had not wanted to believe the truth. Had wanted— wanted—to stick with his own sickening reality—that she was Stephanos's mistress.
Stephanos's mistress—
The vile words stabbed at her again.
That was what he thought her.
A married man's mistress. His sister's husband's mistress...
Shock buckled through her again.
Shock upon shock.
He was Demetria's brother. Nikos Kiriakis was Stephanos's brother-in-law.
And a man on a mission. A mission to get rid of the threat to his sister's marriage. By a method that could not fail. By seducing Stephanos's mistress away from him.
And that was exactly what he'd done. Calculatingly, deliberately, cold-bloodedly.
&nbs
p; He'd come to the hotel with no other purpose than to seek her out—and seduce her.
She lifted her head, lowering her hands. She had to face up to this. Had to.
She said the words. Said them clear and incontestably.
'Nikos Kiriakis seduced me deliberately. He thought I was Stephanos's mistress. There was no other reason he had an affair with me.'
It was like a knife going into her. A knife so deep she gasped aloud with the pain of it.
'And that means that everything—everything that ever happened between us—was a lie. Everything.'
She said the words. Took them into her. Squeezed them tight to wring every last drop from them. Every last pain.
Everything.
Even that most precious moment of all just now, before her dreams had been destroyed before her eyes, that precious moment when for a few brief seconds she had believed, had actually believed, that Nikos had asked her to marry him...
Her face buckled again as the agony of it knifed through and through her, again and again.
There were voices in the bedroom beyond. Shouting, yelling. In Greek. One was Stephanos's—his gruff tones dominated, excoriating in their fury. The other voice was lower—biting out in terse, grim tones. She could understand not a word of what was said. There was a final volley of fury, one last grim reply. Then she heard footsteps, heavy, receding. Then silence.
There came a low, urgent rapping on the bathroom door.
'Janine!' It was Stephanos.
She made no reply.
'Janine—my child—my dearest girl—I must speak to you! must! Come out, please!'
She could hear the emotion in her father's voice.
Her father.
All her life she had wondered about her father, questioned her mother and got no answers. None.
'Oh, darling, don't ask! It's all so long ago.' That was all she had ever had got out of her mother. At first she had grown up thinking there was something terrible about her father—or that she did not deserve to have one. Then, eventually, as she had come to understand her mother's lifestyle—the endless parade of men, the endless houses they'd gone to live in, apartments they'd occupied for a brief time, nothing more, the ceaseless restlessness of her mother, her pointless, idle, butterfly existence—she had arrived at a bitter conclusion. Her mother had simply had no idea which of her lovers had fathered her.